Austrian central bank raises 2022 inflation forecast

BERLIN (Reuters) - Austria's central bank (OeNB) said on Wednesday it expects inflation in the country to rise in 2022 thanks to high energy prices and supply bottlenecks and only start dropping in 2023-2024.

Consumer prices, harmonised to make them comparable with data from other European Union countries (HICP), look set to rise to 3.2% in 2022 compared to 2.8% in 2021 but then decline to 2.3% in 2023 and 2.0% in 2024, OeNB said in a statement.

The central bank's previous forecast from September 2021 was for 2022 inflation of 2.2%.

In 2021, HICP inflation in Austria rose from 1.5% in the first quarter to 3.9% in the fourth quarter, the highest level since the start of monetary union in 1999, and around two-thirds of that increase can be attributed to higher energy prices, OeNB said.

(Reporting by Zuzanna Szymanska, editing by Thomas Escritt)